The News Minute-Newslaundry journalist Nidhi Suresh was shortlisted for the prestigious True Story Award for her in-depth, long-form reportage on the 2018 rape allegations against Franco Mulakkal, the then Bishop of Jalandhar.
This time, over 1,000 text submissions from more than 100 countries come each year. The True Story Award, launched in 2019, is also the first global journalism prize.
The international jury consists of 45 members from 24 different countries who nominate the 36 best texts. The reporters were invited to present their work at the True Story Festival in Bern, Switzerland. Winners were announced on May 5.
The award recognises reportage across three categories: ‘Impact’, ‘Storytelling’ and ‘Research’. Nidhi was nominated for the ‘Storytelling’ category.
Nidhi’s story, Against God’s men: A nun, a bishop, and the trial of India’s Catholic Church, marks the first time Sister Ranit spoke publicly about the rape allegations she made against Bishop Franco Mulakkal.
Spanish journalist Martin Caparros won in the Impact category for his story ALS: The Sentence, published in El País.
The finalists for this category were Tony Bartelme for his story 41 seconds, published in US-based The Post & Courier; Nesrine Malik for her story I couldn’t cry over my children like everyone else, published in The Guardian; and Łukasz Pilip and Izabela Dłużyk for The Bird Lady, published by Polish-language magazine Pismo. Magazyn Opinii.
In 2018, Sister Ranit accused Franco of raping her multiple times. The violence allegedly took place between 2014 and 2016. This was also the very first time in India that a nun filed a rape case against a bishop.
After Franco was acquitted in 2022, Ranit and the nuns who stood with her were subject to prolonged harassment from Church authorities. The 289-page judgement itself was steeped in patriarchal and outdated rationale.
Noting the story’s significance and storytelling, the jury said, “In this extraordinary piece of narrative journalism, the writer enters a cloistered world with patience, restraint, and moral clarity. It allows silence to speak as loudly as testimony.”
The jury added that Nidhi’s reportage is “at once intimate and expansive”. Her prose is “controlled, luminous, and unshowy”. But her story’s most powerful achievement, the jury observed, is its ethical choices. “It refuses sensationalism while refusing silence … This is storytelling as witness: precise, compassionate, and fearless.
Nidhi was previously shortlisted in 2025 for her story An orchestrated nightmare: A sexual assault that unmasked Malayalam cinema.
